Eugenia A. "Genie" Kennedy, educator

Eugenia A. "Genie" Kennedy, a former Peace Corps volunteer and teacher, died Jan. 7 of multiple organ failure at her Bel Air home.

She was 82.

A daughter of a businessman and a homemaker, Sarah Eugenia Asbury, who did not use her first name, was born and raised in Delta, Pa.

After graduating from Delta High School in 1947, she earned a bachelor's degree in business education in 1951 from Russell Sage College in upstate New York.

She was married to William Jackson,, an engineer with the York Corp. in York, Pa. The couple, who later divorced, lived in Roanoke, Va., and Albany, N.Y., where she attended graduate school at Russell Sage.

After her children were grown, Mrs. Kennedy joined the Peace Corps in 1978, and was assigned to the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, where she taught business classes.

After she left the Peace Corps in 1980, Mrs. Kennedy taught business courses at a private school in Key West, Fla., before returning to Delta in the early 1980s, when she took a job at the Jobs Corps Center in Bainbridge, Pa.

"Genie was able through her warm and emphatic personality to establish mutual respect and understanding with her disadvantaged students," said John S. Murphy, a cousin with whom she lived in Bel Air.

After the Job Corps Center closed in the 1980s, she moved to the west coast of Florida, where she met and married George Kennedy, a retired Conrail locomotive engineer, in 1988.

Mrs. Kennedy moved to Mound, Minn., in 1996, after her husband's death to be near her children and grandchildren.

Mrs. Kennedy returned to Baltimore in 2000 and since 2002 had been living in Bel Air.

She enjoyed spending winters in Venice, Fla., Mr. Murphy said.

Mrs. Kennedy was a member of Slateville Presbyterian Church, 308 Slateville Road in Delta, where a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 4.

In addition to her cousin, Mrs. Kennedy is survived by a son, Kelley Jackson of Minnetonka Beach, Minn.; two daughters, Pam Wright of Wayzata, Minn., and Lori Underwood of Delano, Minn.; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.